Guest authors Silvia Cambié and Yang-May Ooi discuss social media usage and how it can enhance customer loyalty.

The reason why people can’t stop talking about social media is the huge cultural shift that lies behind this phenomenon. Kevin Roberts, CEO Worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi, calls it the ‘attraction economy’.

Brands are no longer dictating the rules of engagement. It is all about developing an emotional connection with consumers: stimulating them, exciting them and drawing them in.

Roberts believes in the need to transform brands into love marks able to attract loyalty beyond reason. In order to do this, we need to tap into the values and passions that move netizens and drive them to spend hours of their unpaid time discussing an issue on social platforms like LinkedIn or Twitter.

Online publics are not the audiences we used to know. The 2009 Edelman Trust Barometer, the agency’s annual credibility survey, discovered that peers are among the most credible sources of information about a company, with 47 per cent of the people surveyed trusting what they hear from ‘a person like yourself’. However that person is not defined by shared nationality, religion or social background, but rather by common interests. Online communities ‘are not geographically contained’.

Listening is rule number one when dealing with them.

Vincent-Wayne Mitchell, Sir John E Cohen Professor of Consumer Marketing at Cass Business School, says: “Marketing should have always been about listening to the customer. Along the way it became distracted by talking at them. Social media is doing marketing a huge favour by redressing that imbalance and forcing companies to engage and talk with customers.”

According to Sam Flemming, founder of the Shanghai-based Internet research firm CIC, the new rule is ‘don’t ask questions but listen’. Flemming has developed a system to track and measure online conversations about products and brands. He calls it a combination of ‘on online survey and a focus group’.

As a result of the sensitivity connected with discussing openly social and political issues in China, Web 2.0 in the country has a strong commercial component. People discuss brands on social networking sites and exchange information about products. Monitoring and participating in these conversations turns social media into marketing intelligence.

Emerging economies are teaching us important lessons as to how to value online customer engagement.

Let’s take a look at some case studies:

While US-based sites like MySpace or Facebook are still trying to figure out how to make real money through social networking, a Chinese site seems to have found a model that does not rely on advertising. QQ is China’s most popular social networking site – China’s equivalent to Facebook – with more than 400 million active users, twice as many as Facebook. In 2008, it recorded revenues of one billion US$ mostly from the sale of avatars, a digital representation of a person or a character, and virtual pets.

In Malaysia, MPH Publishing, an arm of the MPH bookstore chain, hosts literary breakfasts at their stores across Kuala Lumpur, inviting book lovers and ‘litbloggers’ to discuss books and meet authors. Many of the litbloggers have come to know each other through connections made online and also through these live events. They blog about the upcoming event weeks in advance and some voluntarily create digital banners about the event which are passed on from blog to blog to publicise the event online.

Afterwards, many of the bloggers write up their experience of the event: who was there, what was discussed and share their personal responses – and include their snapshots as well. Eric Forbes, editor at MPH publishing, has his own blog about books and is well-respected among the bloggers. He takes an active part in the live events and this is clearly appreciated by the bloggers.

The litbloggers are just one example of how ordinary folk in Malaysia are using social media as an extension of their natural sociability. In Asia, there is an emphasis on personal connections and Malaysians in particular are naturally friendly and love getting together – blogging and connecting via Twitter and other online means are simply other ways of being sociable. It’s not about the technology, but about making and retaining relationships beyond the physical meet-up.

From the perspective of MPH, Forbes says: “The MPH Group of Companies has definitely experienced a surge in book sales and brand recognition [since the Litblogger Breakfasts started]. For maximum impact, it is important that we also engage the press – both print and broadcast – with regard to our activities. For books, word of mouth has become the best form of advertisement. The returns on investment for MPH of this active engagement with blogging and the blogging community are expected to be long term in nature. However, we found that the returns on investment are quite immediate. You do get immediate feedback from the blogging community on how they perceive the company and every move it makes. It is vital that the companies are always on their toes because every false move will be observed and discussed on blogs.”

Over in East Malaysia, kayaking enthusiast Francis Ho started a blog to share his photographs of his kayaking trips with friends. He says: “I never expected anyone would be interested in my blog – who wants to read about a 50-year-old guy’s lame views and photos, right? So I was astounded at the number of total strangers and visitors who visited my blog, which was basically focused on kayaking in Kuching!”

When Ho started his tour company, Kuching Kayaking, to take people out on kayaking trips through the beautiful rainforests of East Malaysia, his clients got to know about the business primarily through his blog – and also that of prominent blogger Kenny Sia, who is a friend. Ho’s blog provides a human and personal angle to the business website and he thinks that the blog has helped increase the number of online bookings. “Kayaking is a passion and through my blog I think that people can sense the enthusiasm and how genuine and wonderful the kayaking trips through the rainforests are.”

QQ in China has tapped into social network users’ love of virtual pets and avatars. Eric Forbes loves books, Francis Ho loves kayaking trips. QQ understands that what people love, they will pay for. In the case of Eric and Francis, it is their love of books and kayaking that is the key to the connection they have made with their customers – blogging has simply given them the means to make that connection.

The businesses that most successfully engage with their customers via social media are those that understand what their customers love such as China’s QQ, or who genuinely share their customers’ passion and engage with them on peer-to-peer level such as Eric Forbes and Francis Ho.

Social media helps businesses build and maintain relationships with their customers, encouraging loyalty and the spread of brand recognition through customer word-of-mouth. People do business with people they like and trust – social media is well-suited to increasing those two foundation stones for long term relationships with your customers.

Silvia Cambié and Yang-May Ooi are co-authors of ‘International Communications Strategy’ (pictured), published by Kogan Page (www.koganpage.com).                                                                                         

Silvia Cambié (pictured left) is a cross-cultural communicator. She runs Chanda Communications and writes a blog XCulture (www.chandacomxculture.com).

Yang-May Ooi (pictured below) is a writer specialising in cross-cultural issues and social media. She grew up in Malaysia and now lives in London. where she runs her cross-cultural blog Fusion View (www.fusionview.co.uk).